I say dont come out too often. This is unusual for me. I do want to thank all of you for your friendship and your loyal support and for planning this wonderful evening for me. I shall remember it always and thanks to the young people for this great pat nixon, first republican first lady to address a national convention, miami, 1972. She went interest a hard background to the white house. She traveled more widely than anybody before her, made volunteerism her issue and was chief supporter and behind the scenes political adviser to her husband president Richard Nixon. Good evening and welcome to cspan series first ladies influence and image. Tonight well tell you the story of pat nixon. Though her time in the white house was really eclipsed by her husbands resignation from office in the wake of watergate, so were going to tell more about her record and learn more about her life before the white house, what she did while she was there, and her legacy. Here are our two guests to tell her story, tim naftali, president ial historian and former head of the Nixon Library and marry brennan, pat nixon biographer and history professor at texas state university. Welcome to both of you. Ill start with this perception of pat nixon, she is described in your book actually as an enigma, so what should people know . What are a couple of thins about pat nixon that they would be surprised to learn . Pat was fun and funny. People who knew her talked about her sense of humor and she was adventurous. As a young woman, she worked for a hospital in new york city and would go out with the patients who had tuberculosis and take trays from the cafeteria and slide down the hill. Thats the kind of thing she would love to do. She was a working mom and she was a pioneer. Her whit was strong and at times biting. She didnt always take herself seriously. And she probably did not want to be first lady. Well, during her time in the media, sometimes referred to her as classic pat. One of our viewers on facebook referred to that in the conversation we have going there and he said it was because she always smiled but never conveyed any emotion. Is that really where that name came from and if so what was going on there . The name came from very early on during the first controversy she had to deal with during the checkers speech. The cameraman, one camera, and so he told her we never know when youre going to when were going to come on to you, so just keep a smile on your face. So she kept that smile the whole time. I think there were other reasons she was holding that smile as well but i think this started the idea she was this rigid personality and afterwards it just kind of kept coming back to that. What was the Public Opinion of her life in the white house . She was always much more popular than Richard Nixon. And in fact a lot of the public felt a great deal of sympathy for her, particularly as the demonstrations got more raucous outside of the white house because of vietnam and later because of watergate. I wanted to add something to what mary said, it is really important when we think about her image to think about how much of it she didnt control. Yes. Because this is a very a modern white house, Nixon White House in many ways was a model of the modern white house. The white house decided how the president ial family would be used or not used. And we i hope well get into this more, pat nixon did not have the opportunity to control as much as she would have liked the way in which she was presented the American People. And was this precedent setting . For the white house to go to this extreme with the media . No, i mean, the Kennedy White house had thought a lot about jackie and the very fact that Jacqueline Kennedy went to dallas, was going to dallas because the president knew he needed her help in what was supposed to be just a political tour. So this was not the first time Jacqueline Kennedy was the first. Roosevelt thought about her own public role but she pushed that. I would say she is unilaterally responsible for that. The Roosevelt White house wasnt pushing her in front. I think Jackie Kennedy is really the first lady that is part of a media strategy. Pat nixon did not play the role. The public role of the white house wanted her to play. The Republican Party used her during eisenhower when she was second lady and really wanted to use this image of dick and pat as this young people, that mirrored the two young children, and once it was there, they couldnt really stop it. It spun a life of its own. Do you think that were they doing the same thing with mamie . Mamie was so much older. I think that pat had to kind of fill in for mamie. Mamie was more the grandmother and wasnt making public appearances the way that pat was. They needed pat to be this perfect housewife who could do all these things at the same time. Interesting, what we learned with Lady Bird Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy didnt campaign very much, Lady Bird Johnson was out on the campaign trail making a lot of appearances, setting an image for the public. Oh, yes. Pat nixon, how did she feel of the experiences of her life, an experience that she would that i think defined the way the two of them related to politics because pat was a very private person who would not do not want anyone to know about her private life and here you have her husband telling what money they owed, she didnt have a fur coat, and for her, this was a horrible experience. Where as for her husband, he celebrated that every year. Speaking of her husband, let me get to some video. Here is former president Richard Nixon talking about pat his wife, in an interview in 1983. She probably is one of the most intelligent women ever to have been first lady. Political discussions, she doesnt say much, but she can always go to the heart for matters. She has an enormously good intuition. These are factors, the average person just thinks of her as somebody who went along for the ride and so forth, plastic pat they call her, though im sure some of them didnt believe it, if she had been the wife of a lynn rawl, my god, they would have canonized her. But because she was my wife, she had to find ways to knock her. It is quite remarkable despite the fact she has not had a particularly positive press, not nearly what she deserves. People remember her as being dignified, as one devoted to her family. They remember her too as one she may not have worn designer gowns, but was blessed with natural beauty. She didnt need them. The ladies in the press, some of the men as well, who covered, criticized mrs. Nixon very cruelly and it hurt her. Shouldnt have, but it did. She should have considered the source. And they said why didnt she make speechs . That shows she doesnt have a mind of her own. It is not true at all. Shes just smart. She knows you cant have two voices out of the white house. She had ideas and expressed them privately. And another thing that shows, which the critics among the ladies in the press, what they wouldnt understand, they wouldnt appreciate at all, she was selfassured and selfconfident. She didnt have such a big ego that she had to go out and prove that she had a career in her own right to her, what was important was the career of her husband. So we hear a lot of criticism bit president , former president , that much of pat nixons perception were an unfriendly media. Thats not surprising since thats how he viewed his own perception problem. But Julie Nixon Eisenhower has written a Remarkable Book about her mother. It is first of all, the fact that a president ial child writes about a first lady is interesting. But it is not about pat, it is about the family. It is a very revealing book. And there is a line in the book where julie talks about how her mother was really involved in discussions with the Vice President. Because the discussions all happened at was it forest lawn where they lived. Yes. And so she said my mother was involved, but not so much in the white house and then she said, because my father decided that he wanted to keep his personal and private lives more as personal and public lives more separated. It was Richard Nixons decision she not be involved in discussions about policy. He plays a role in deciding that she is not as much of a part of this white house as she might otherwise have wanted to be. We like for you to be involved in our conversation this evening. You can tweet us firstladies, conversation is already under way. We also have a Facebook Page and youll find it at facebook. Com cspan and there is discussion where people are posting comments and well find a way to as many of those comments during we can on our 90 minutes and our phone line. Well get to your calls throughout the program. Speaking of the media, in 1968, pat nixon was interviewed by gloria steinem, the feminist, who had was writing an article in new york magazine. She asked pat nixon what she most admired. Here is what pat nixon had to say. I never had time to dream about being anyone else. I had to work. My parents died when ways a teenager and i had to work my way through college. I never had it easy. Im not like all you. I want to use that as a segue to talk about her upbringing. She didnt begin life as patricia nixon. What was her birthvvvvvvvvvvvvv . Selma catherine ryan. Her father called her when he came home, he wanted to call they are patricia, didnt like thelma catherine. He called her her friends in School Called her thelma. At high school, they called her buddy. When she went to college, junior college, she enrolled herself as pat nixon pat ryan. That was the first time she consciously renamed herself as a child, she had a very hard time, her mother died when she was not quite 13. She was then then her father died four years later. She kept house for her brothers. They lived on a Hard Scrabble farm, they were always working. She had jobs sweeping out banks. She worked at she worked to sweep floors, she did all kinds of things because they had to make money to be able to pay the bills. To keep the farm, and they rented it out because they had to pay her fathers medical bill. She drove a couple across the country, across she drove them, they paid her to drive their car across the country, she was going to visit fathers relatives on the east coast, went and visited them, and then one of her aunts was a nun who worked at the hospital and gave her a job. She was on her own in new york city. She was a pharmacist. She walked all different jobs, lab, radioologiidologist. She was supposed to the deal was that she would get a return ticket. Yes. And she didnt use it. No. She decided to stay in new york. A real story here, an american story of someone who comes fromming nothing. It is important because it belies the plastic pat. This is a woman with a great deal of gumption and drive. Knows what she wants and wants the world. Shes really interested. She comes from southern california. From an agricultural part outside of los angeles, los angeles county, but outside of los angeles, and she moves to new york. She stays. She only comes back when her brothers tell her they raised enough money so she can go to college. She goes to usc. Throughout the program well be visiting the richard Nixon Library to learn more about pat nixon. Here is our first stop. This is a little bit more about pat nixons early years. Mrs. Nixon grew up very humble beginnings. She spent a lot of time working at the farm, here is an account from 1941, from an account book, she kept the books, 19 years old when this was happening. She talks about how at the end he here, this sort of shows you how difficult it was to make a living, they barely made ends meet. As a teenager in the depression, mrs. Nixon took on a lot of jobs from becoming a pharmacist, an xray technician, a personal shopper selling clothing, she became a model and would do call testing. She got an the list from Paramount Pictures and rko corporation to be an extra in a film. Show also as part of this whole just from job to job, she also had a role, you can see her dancing in the film. Her role was cut out. Also, her shows her name, and the restrictions that one had to go through when going through but eventually she had enough money to achieve her degree and from university at southern california, became a teacher. And how did she meet Richard Nixon . She was she was teaching at Whittier High School and she she loved theater. She was in theater all throughout high school and in college and there was a Community Theater production going on. One of the older teachers suggested she go and try out. And it was not just a suggestion, she kind of got the idea she should do it. She went to do it and Richard Nixon, young lawyer in whittier was trying to make connections every way he could. And so he was also trying out for the show. So they were both there at the same time, and he says he fell in love with her, he offered to drive so she and a friend home. He says in the memoirs he asked her to marry him the first night. Driving back and forth, but he was very persistent. He ran after pat. She did come home and tell her roommate that this guy had really put the moves on her and that she wasnt sure she was going to go out with him. But she thought he could be president some day. You both spent a lot of time in documentary materials. There is so much speculation about the partnership between the two of them and the source of their couplehood. What was it about the nixens that attracted them to each other . I would think and mary will know this better because i dont think that theyre as close in the president ial years. It is their intelligence. Theyre both highly intelligent people. And theyre both quite determined. Richard nixon could not walk over pat nixon. Pat ryan. And i think that both drew them together and at times i think it pushed them apart. There are some similarities in their characters, they both have strong i think they both came from backgrounds in which there had been problems. Nixon had richard had a brother who died. Pats parents died. I think there was they both had the sense of tragedy in their life and i would add ambition. They both wanted things. Pat was not going to be happy staying in whittier. She wanted to see the world. And i think she saw that in dick. This was not something that was she wasnt going to have to stay where she was. This is something that as you think about first ladies, particularly modern first ladies, a number of them are very driven, very ambitious. I just want to ask about in the book you talk about the really interesting letter shes writes after the war. Yes. And isnt she hinting . Well, she writes the letter hes talking about is the letter that she wrote when hes getting ready to come home. And she while he wasoversea s in world war ii, she worked, she wrote him this wonderful letter, she said she had missed him terribly. They wrote to one another every day during the war. She said if she had not been so worried about him, she would have had a wonderful time during all of this. Because she was on her own, she had money, she was in this wonderful city. So that he should be careful when he came back and love her, love her very dearly because otherwise she would regret she was giving up everything. She knew what was possible. So she did know there was another life. But she was also, i think, aware of the fact that there was a balance. I think she was always aware of how much was she going to be able to do if she didnt have him back. She wanted him to know that he needed to Pay Attention to her. Well have a video of those letters, the courtship letters which have been leased by the Nixon Library. Well show those next. They met at a play in whittier called the dark tower. Each auditioned for a separate role. Thats how they ended up going out on the first date and she initially put him off for a while. She wasnt very interested in his romantic advances, but he said to her, later said he said im going to marry you some day and she laughed and they were married in 1940, two years later. What we have here is a rare treasure. These are some of the letters that president and mrs. Nixon wrote to each other between 1938 and when she wethey were marrie 1940 and showed courtship, incredibly rare, they were just recently released by the Nixon Foundation in 2012. So this is a letter that was written by president nixon, to do mrs. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 lets go for a long ride sunday. Lets go to the mountains on weekends. So what this letter really shows us is a romantic side of a young president nixon that really wasnt public before these letters were released. Here mrs. Nixon writes thank you ever so much, she replies with this kind note and includes a shamrock, and this one, she was being a little friendly, little flirty, and she writes, social notes, romantic, and in case i dont see you before, why dont you come early wednesday at 6 00 and ill see if i can burn a hamburger for you. Did you see the sunset . A new picture every few minutes. We see here a letter that is also not dated. But she writes to him, ill be here for a short time, so shall i see you . She said the end, ramble, ramble, must be the hour, yes, sir rick sir rick was a clock that president nixon gave to mrs. Nixon when they were courting and here she she says, sir rick has the nicest face, the clock face, i like him so very much. It is a great story, and a sign of the nixons that the public doesnt really know too much and is really not familiar. So thats why these letters are such treasures. Adrian asked on twitter what religion was pat nixon since president nixon was a quaker. She did convert to quakerism, but she never really practiced any religion. Neither did richard once he once he kind of outgrew his he went to the military. He was a quaker, but wasnt really a practicing quaker. For the record, he proposed to her on the beach in san clemente, california, considrre . I dont know if ive ever seen anything about my biogr